The Stager is great fun, and Coll proves herself as shrewd a social anthropologist as she is a buoyant writer. - The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice

Even brilliant social satires can be limited, but Susan Coll is so slyly perceptive, so attentive to nuanced relationships between people that she gets at how we conform life to the stories we tell ourselves. - The Chicago Tribune, Editor's Choice

Susan Coll writes about her home town with an insider’s hilarious, mocking affection...Throughout this antic tale, Coll shows us what happens to people when they don’t feel heard or seen, when they wind up walking around as human versions of a house that’s been carefully denuded of the things that made it warm and welcoming — that made it a home.
- Julie Klam, Washington Post

Coll tips her hand that we're reading not a plain parody of suburban dysfunction but the work of a very good comic novelist subverting conventional structure and perspective…chuck your attachment to reality and cheerfully follow Coll down the rabbit hole. - Washingtonian

Overgrown houses, failed planned communities, and a consumerist culture contrast with the stager’s efforts to declutter and sterilize in this offbeat social satire. Coll takes on marriage, friendship, and fidelity to dark-comic effect. - Booklist